History

Just a reminder that Benjamin Franklin was a teenage anon sh*tposter cosplaying as a woman.

Before lightning, bifocals, or founding a country, Benjamin Franklin was a 16 year old printer’s apprentice sneaking essays under a door at night. Signed by a fake middle aged widow named… pic.twitter.com/1TkGxii7bD

— InfantryDort (@infantrydort) January 21, 2026

 

An Insight

“In the multiculturalist’s mental world, in which the savages are forever noble, there is no criterion by which to distinguish high art from low trash.”

Theodore Dalrymple pic.twitter.com/RYrK0liwp6

— Mark W. (@DurhamWASP) January 20, 2026

 

The hard work is refusing two temptations

From The Helicopter, The Courtroom, & The Greater Good by Rajesh Achanta.  The subheading is ... hope. recently airborne.  Speaking about the strategy and tactics regarding the Maduro raid in Venezuela.

The hard work is refusing two temptations: moral purity that won’t speak about outcomes, and moral convenience that speaks only about outcomes.

If we want to argue about this without chest-thumping or doom, its useful to separate two sentences that people keep merging: I’m glad this happened and I endorse the method. Those are different claims.

 

I see wonderful things

"The Dialogue of Seska Solsa with a Weasel," a painting by the Ingush artist Khozh-Akhmed Imagozhev.

Seska Solsa is one of the central heroes of the Vainakh Nart Sagas. According to legend, he possessed the gift of understanding the language of animals, and the weasel was his… pic.twitter.com/q3HPT3p6rP

— PAN CAUCASUS (@pancaucasus) January 21, 2026

 

Offbeat Humor

A math professor, Dave, has a problem with his sink, so he calls a plumber...

The plumber comes over and quickly fixes the sink. The professor is happy until he gets the bill. He tells the plumber, "How can you charge this much? This is half of my paycheck." But he pays it…

— 🇨🇭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿InLucysHead🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇨🇭© (@InsideLucysHead) January 21, 2026

 

Data Talks

It’s not about his ego. It’s not about the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s not about the Mercator projection. It’s not about imperialism. It’s not about resources. It’s not about real estate.

This is what it has always been about, and this is why it was always going to happen. pic.twitter.com/DUu36QAkAk

— Payton Alexander (@AlexanderPayton) January 19, 2026

 

Perhaps people throw themselves into heated polemics to give content to their lives, to warm their hearts.

From Sparks: Eric Hoffer and the art of the notebook by Tom Bethell.  One of Hoffer's observations is:

POLEMICS GIVE WARMTH

Perhaps people throw themselves into heated polemics to give content to their lives, to warm their hearts. What Luther said of hatred is true of all quarreling. There is nothing like a feud to make life seem full and interesting. 1950

Seventy-years later and with the always-in, always connected, social media rich internet, we can see that the technology has changed but the human motivation is the same.

With a caveat.  In 1950, even in prosperous America, everyone was much closer to the financial margin.  We are astonishingly wealthier, healthier, live in bigger houses, with more things than ever in history.  Your average American today lives a safer, healthier, richer and more comfortable, life than any medieval monarch.  

It used to be fate and circumstance forced existential, life-and-death trials and tribulations on us with great frequency.  Mere survival gave life meaning.

The further we pull away from that dangerous frontier where survival is a real question, it seems like the more some people are disposed towards meaningless quarreling in order to give meaning to life.  

It is notable that the friction created on social media is at such variance from real life.  Pareto distribution is everywhere.  Only a small percent of people use X (or any social media platform) and only a small proportion of those on the platform generate most the content, and most that content tends to be self-created quarreling.  

Not only are people safer and more comfortable but at the same time we have created a mechanism for them to create the quarreling cantankerous environment (think BueSky) that creates a simulacrum of meaning.  

There are people who believe only so far as they understand

From Wilson by A. Scott Berg

Wilson never doubted his faith. “There are people who believe only so far as they understand,” he said, “—that seems to me presumptuous.” The power of religion, he insisted, made his life “worth living.”

I think it is one of the ironies of our culture that there are such tensions within our constituent sources.  The modern west is the offspring of Christianity, Classical Liberalism and the Scientific Revolution (Rational Empiricism combined with the Scientific Method).  It is a rich mix and Christianity is a critical moderating influence to the authoritarianism and even totalitarianism which are a not uncommon side-effect of rational empiricism.  

Yet Protestant Christians weekly proclaim the mystery of faith:

Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again.

The Empirical Rationalist can argue themselves up to a certain point of anemic faith, a point of convincing probabilities of an historical event, but that is a mere shadow.  Christianity is a matter of faith in an unproven miracle.  If it were proven, there would be no faith.  

The leap of faith for the Classical Liberal/Empirical Rationalist is to go beyond being a person who believes only so far as they understand.  The more a Classical Liberal/Empirical Rationalist you are, the greater is the leap of faith into belief.  

A Voyage to the Moon by Gustave Doré

A Voyage to the Moon by Gustave Doré (France, 1832-1883)

Click to enlarge.

History

Story goes that during WWII, the British Indian Army planned to drop a company of the toughest Gurkhas behind Japanese lines to help stop the oncoming invaders. A British major explained the plan to the Gurkha sergeant major, saying: “We’ll drop you from 600 feet.”

The sergeant… pic.twitter.com/Oty3VLZqo2

— Dr. M.F. Khan (@Dr_TheHistories) January 21, 2026